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Ubuntu 8.10 Mouse Clicking Issues

I'm not entirely sure when it started but, I do know it is a recent issue I've just begun to notice the last month or so. I think that means it's a regression of some kind.

Anyway, clicking is going haywire for me on my setup. At first I thought it was limited to Firefox because that was the only place I noticed it often. Then I realized that it is actually everywhere in Ubuntu. It seems to manifest itself at a seemingly random interval. The issue itself also seems to be random.

Here is a list (in no particular order) of some of the different things I've noticed:

When I click once it actually ends up doing a double click.

When I right-click it will (seemingly) randomly just execute one of the context menu items rather than show the context menu.

When highlighting text it will sometimes just unselect what I had selected and move the text pointer to where my cursor currently is.

Clicking once inside a textarea (on the web or a text editor or what have you) will result in the entire word or line you clicked next to to become highlighted.

Clicking on an icon once and then clicking some empty area on the screen immediately after will cause the icon to execute rather than become un-highlighted.

There are also several other similar issues related to this clicking issue but I just can't remember them all right now.

Some more info:

Operating System: Ubuntu Linux version 8.10 (with all available updates)

As I said, these are random. They don't all happen at once and they all don't happen all the time. It all seems very random.

These issue are causing computing to be a major hell, to say the least. I'm almost thinking about downgrading to a previous version of Ubuntu since these problems didn't seem to be an issue for them. Or even as a last resort, maybe back to Windows again. I really hope to avoid that option, but it may be my only one if this all persists with no fix. They might have a fix for it in the next major release of Ubuntu (I don't know) but, I'm definitely not waiting that long. This issue is critical!

Has anyone else experienced some or all of these issues? Does anyone know of a possible fix?

I understand if there is no way currently to fix it. At the very least this thread can serve as a place for people experiencing these same issues to rant about it.

Oh, also... I've read some stuff from several people (all with different mice and setups) claiming to have these same issues so I don't believe this is merely a case of mis-configuration or similar.

Ubuntu is the only operating system I have on this computer right now. Fully wiped my entire drive and did a clean install of Ubuntu (from an official CD that I ordered from the Ubuntu people) to get where I am now.

I'm trying to think back to when I first started noticing this... I think it started happening in 8.x. I don't think it was an issue in versions prior to 8.x. So, it must be some change that happened between 7.10 and 8.04 that is causing the issues. I just don't know what. Hmm...

This won't work for ibex(8.10) because they changed the whole Xorg config thing(go figure), but what does this line say on hardy(it should just list the mouse drivers, you can ignore any extra lines you have):

Code:

grep mouse /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Oh, and you don't need to restart to test driver changes or anything, all you need to do is log out and in again, Xorg, which handles all the drivers is reset when logging in or out.

If you are using PHP please use the [PHP] and [/PHP] forum tags for highlighting...
The same applies to HTML and the forums [HTML][/HTML] tags.

There's a hash at the start of the line? That means it's commented out, which is confusing, because, you know, you can use the mouse...

I've got a feeling they made some changes in 8.10 which involved not using xorg.conf for mouse/keyboard/monitor etc config now. Maybe something to do with updated HAL? I don't have any entry at all for keyboard or mouse in my xorg.conf (on a clean install of 8.10) yet everything works just fine. I did have an issue running it at work where I have to use VMWare under OSX, the mouse was not registering at the correct coordinates (hence my original question) but that was fixed with (I believe) a HAL update shortly after release.

Well, my current install is an upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 (using the built-in upgrade functionality of Ubuntu) so maybe some wires got crossed somewhere along the way during the upgrade. I did want to do a fresh install of 8.10 when it came out but I wasn't ready so I just did the upgrade route. But now I have things backed up so I can wipe it and do a fresh install of 8.10. I'll give that a shot and post back my results. If that does fix things I'm going to be mad. We should be able to use the upgrade function without the fear that it's going to break things...

There normally is very little chance of something breaking during an upgrade, the mouse problems that have come about in 8.10 have almost universally been caused by the huge renovation of how they handled Xorg(which handles most of the input/output, without it you can only really access a command line, and there usage of usb keyboards would be dependant upon if your mobo supports legacy mode).

Anyway, no point me defending it, I've moved off ubuntu already(still keep the install disk around, and hang out on the forums, but I'm a knoppix man now :P).

If you are using PHP please use the [PHP] and [/PHP] forum tags for highlighting...
The same applies to HTML and the forums [HTML][/HTML] tags.

I haven't yet done the new install. Been busy backing up my important files and such.

Anyway, the update is: I was doing some work with a GParted 0.3.9 live CD and noticed this same problem there! So that has to mean that the problem is coming from something that both Ubuntu and GParted use. Gnome maybe?

I think this actually makes it even more confusing for me. I burnt this GParted CD back when Ubuntu 7.04 was the latest. So I think that rules out the possibility that this is an issue limited to the new Ubuntu 8.xx series.

But, back when I burnt the GParted CD I never had these mouse issues.

So what could be consistent between GParted 0.3.9 and Ubuntu 8.xx? As far as I know they do things separately. So, a problem with drivers or whatever in Ubuntu would not carry over to GParted. So it has to be something they are both getting wrong independently of each other. And if they are both getting the same thing wrong independently of each other, why did it just start happening? If they're going to get something wrong wouldn't they have been getting it wrong from day one rather than just all of a sudden out of nowhere?

Of course, I guess these could be two totally separate problems... They just seem to be the same. And its a little too weird that I never noticed it in GParted until I started noticing it in Ubuntu.

I also don't think this is just a case of it always being there and me just now noticing it because this is a major issue. I would have noticed this before. This isn't an issue you can miss. It makes everything harder to do.

Now I'm even more confused! I think typing this message also made me more confused. Hopefully you can decipher what I'm saying.